Facebook, Apple now paying for female employees to freeze their eggs

Facebook and Apple to cover cost of egg freezing for female employees

The low proportion of female employees working in tech companies has been the subject ofmuchdebate in recent years, prompting many Silicon Valley CEOs to start getting creative in their attempts to bolster gender diversity in the workplace.

Others, like Apple, are actively trying to recruit more women and minorities into leadership positions by revising their corporate charters to mandate more diversity among board candidates.

Still, women working in tech continue to report startling accounts of gender-based discrimination amidst Silicon Valley's "bro" or "frat boy" culture — particularly when it comes to the issue of motherhood.

In a Fortune survey of 716 female former tech workers, 484 women cited motherhood as a factor in their decisions to leave the industry — many of them describing poor maternity leave policies, inflexible working arrangements or a lack of childcare options at their former places of work.

With more tech CEOs pledging to increase the number of women in their workforce, it stands to reason that Silicon Valley's maternal support options would expand — and indeed, they've already started to.

Interestingly, however, so has a woman's option to delay having children until she's further along into her career.

According to NBC News, both Facebook and Apple have recently agreed to cover the cost of freezing a female employee's eggs for future reproductive purposes.

As CBC's The Current explained in 2010, egg freezing (or "oocyte cryopreservation") is becoming an increasingly popular option for "women who are fertile, but don't want to have a baby just yet ... women who want to delay pregnancy in order to focus on their career or to find the right partner."

Older Parents/Egg FreezingThe average age of women giving birth in Canada was 29. 7 years in 2004, a slight increase from 29. 6 in 2003. This continues a long-established upward trend and we're asking what does it mean for children and for society to have older parents.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to NBC that it had already rolled out this health perk to employees under its surrogacy benefit, while a spokesperson for Apple said that it would start doing the same in January under its fertility benefit.

The tech juggernauts appear to be the first major employees to offer this type of coverage for non-medical reasons, according to NBC — a significant move, considering the cost of the procedure (up to at least $10,000 US for every round of egg extraction, plus $500 US or more annually for storage).

Both companies have pledged to cover the costs of egg freezing up to $20,000 US.

"Having a high-powered career and children is still a very hard thing to do,” said egg-freezing advocate Brigitte Adams to NBC, noting that by offering this benefit, "companies are investing in women... and supporting them in carving out the lives they want."

However, not all are in agreement over the message that this option sends to female employees.

"Would potential female associates welcome this option knowing that they can work hard early on and still reproduce, if they so desire, later on?” wrote Glenn Cohen, co-director of Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, in a blog post about employee's covering the cost of egg freezing last year. “Or would they take this as a signal that the firm thinks that working there as an associate and pregnancy are incompatible?”

On Twitter, the debate rages over whether the move is a step in the right direction, or a potential hindrance to the family lives of working women.

Some are taking the benefit as a sign that Facebook and Apple would like their female employees to delay, or even forgo parenthood altogether.

The egg-freezing perk enforces Silicon Valley's obsessive work mentality AND gender progress--see we can have it all http://t.co/plRQIVZjNRNitasha Tiku

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